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Court asks CBI to file reply on Indrani’s plea claiming Sheena is alive
ndrani has also sought to know the steps taken on her application addressed to CBI director Subodh Kumar Jaiswal in November 2021 requesting the agency to investigate this aspect
Mumbai: A special court on Monday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to reply by February 4 to a plea filed by Indrani Mukerjea, seeking probe into her claim that her daughter Sheena Bora is alive.
Indrani has also sought to know the steps taken on her application addressed to CBI director Subodh Kumar Jaiswal in November 2021 requesting the agency to investigate this aspect.
Indrani is being prosecuted along with three others for allegedly killing Sheena Bora.
Special CBI judge AS Sayyad asked special public prosecutor Manoj Chaladan to file a reply and adjourned the matter for further hearing.
Indrani moved the plea through her counsel Sana Raees Khan after she failed to get any reply from CBI on her application. Indrani, 49, said she had met an inmate of Byculla jail on November 25, police officer Asha Korke, arrested in an extortion case.
She said the officer told her in Byculla Women’s Prison, where she is lodged, that she had met Sheena on June 21, 2021, near Dal Lake, while she was vacationing in Srinagar.
According to Indrani, Korke had told her that she saw a woman similar to Sheena. When she addressed her as “Sheena”, she asked how she knew her. After Korke said she was a police officer, Sheena asked if she had come to arrest her. Korke said Sheena should go to Mumbai as her mother was arrested for killing her. Sheena responded, “I have started my new life and do not wish to return to my old life anymore.” She later left on a bike with a person who looked like a foreigner.
Indrani has said in her plea, “Overcoming strong emotions, I relooked at certain compelling evidence that had come on record during the course of trial which had given us every reason to believe that my daughter was ‘definitely alive’ after the alleged day of murder on April 24, 2012. The same can be elaborated and explained if this court directs us to do so for the purpose of understanding the facts.”
CBI officials had then told HT that they were not taking the application seriously as they had ample evidence to prove that Sheena was killed.
“The DNA analysis of recovered femur bones and cervical bones exhumed in 2015, when the case came to light, concluded that Indrani was the biological mother of the dead woman,” a CBI officer said.
The trial in the case started on February 24, 2017, and is at an advanced stage. Several prosecution witnesses have already been examined. The court has taken cognisance of the CBI charge sheet. The forensic superimposition of the recovered skull has matched with the face of Sheena.
According to the police, Indrani and her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna strangulated 25-year-old Sheena, Indrani’s daughter from her previous relationship, on April 24, 2012, in a car in Mumbai. The following day, they disposed of the body in a forest area in Gagode village of Raigad district.
The murder came to light after Khar police arrested Shyamvar Rai, Indrani’s former driver, in another case in August 2015. Indrani was arrested on August 25, followed by Khanna’s arrest. Peter Mukerjea was arrested on November 19, 2015, after the case was transferred to CBI.
